May 24, 2009

Archaeology, Technology, and Who is the Punk Archaeologist Now?

Every years, we encounter the same problem. Some vital piece of equipment does not work the way that it should. This year (as it most often is), it was our expensive and elaborate differential GPS unit. We spent Sunday reinstalling the Trimble software on the survey controller. Fortunately, this solved the problem, but it also highlighted the fact that as archaeology develops into the 21st century, the technological demands on the average excavator or survey archaeologist will continue to increase. The knowledge necessary to fix whatever problem has infiltrated our GPS unit was completely arcane. The various menus controlling the device's settings did not cascade in a predictable way nor did they make their purpose know through anything approach common or self-evident terms. The demand for technical expertise continues through the various Geographic Information Systems software as well. Trimble's Geomatics Office and ESRI's ArcGIS are quite dissimilar, yet are both crucial to mapping our site accurately.

While many projects bring in a separate team to conduct mapping or survey activities, PKAP has a more DIY or hands-on approach. Aside from geophysical work -- resistivity and this year ground penetrating radar, our project has found itself (primarily for funding reasons) in a position to take on ever increasing responsibilities for tasks that exist at the borders of specilization. What is interesting, of course, is that some members of the project -- particularly those trained in more tradition archaeology programs -- almost resist the use of technology. Skeptical of its grandiose promises (sub-centimeter accuracy!), elaborate language (EGG Geoid Models!), and temperamental disposition ("Initialization has been lost"!), several members of the project would gladly reject it and return to old style ways of mapping, organizing data, and conducting fieldwork. In fact, we can often detect a bit of passive resistance to the growing significance of technology among several old school project members who subtly resist the various requirements imposed by technology (particularly the inflexible demands of consistency imposed by our databases) and seem to revel in declaring their particular fieldwork as having distinctive, irresolvable autonomy from any larger, technological system.

So this brings me to the question in my subject line. While our project has embraced a fairly wide ranging diy approach (note the various posts at PKAP Graduate Student Perspective Blog and this author has insisted that we do not purchase the ready-made picks and shovels, but the kind where the head is separate (or at least loosely attached) the shaft), there is a lingering reluctance among some members of the project to include technology in their performance of the diy aesthetic. This perhaps parallels one of the grander splits in the punk rock movement: on the one hand, there were punks like Brian Eno who showed an increasing willingness to embrace of technology and electronic music and, on the other, those influences by the folk tradition who recognized the simple implements of rock 'n' roll music (guitar, drums, base, keyboard) as sufficient to communicate their revolution. (It seems obvious that Metal Machine Music is ironic, but what exactly does it critique?).

So PKAP continues. Each day offers the potential for another skirmish between the earnest and self-sufficient archaeologist with the tape, compass, and notebook, and the technologically savvy director burdened with his Mad Max like tangle of databases, GPS units, video cameras, data collectors and "softwares".